


Guilt

by TheMissingMask



Series: Basil lives [9]
Category: The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Epistolary, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 05:48:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29363529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMissingMask/pseuds/TheMissingMask
Summary: Dorian allowed Basil to exhibit his painting
Relationships: Basil Hallward/Henry Wotton, Dorian Gray/Basil Hallward
Series: Basil lives [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1135280
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	Guilt

Excerpt from the nonexistent diary of Basil Hallward

\---

As a matter of course, I do not maintain a journal. Nor, indeed, do I have any intention of starting one at this stage. Not only does very little happen in my life worth writing down, but what need have I to express my thoughts in words when art is so much better suited for the task? However, I find myself at some several hours before dawn still unable to sleep, and with the trial commencing in less than six hours, perhaps it is best that I try to put down here the events which I may be required to recall in court. I am told that I may be called upon as a witness. Harry cannot do it, being too close to the accused, and that leaves me as the only other possible witness to speak in her defense.

So, then, to my account. I shall endeavour not to be overly prosaic, primarily because the only person who shall ever need to read this document is myself, and that I must do in haste before the court commences and with very little preceding sleep.

The night Dorian Gray was murdered, Harry and I attended the opening reception for an exhibition in which I had five paintings, among them the full-length portrait I had painted of Dorian some time ago. I was genuinely astonished when he allowed me to exhibit it after so resolutely refusing to do so. In fact, I was starting to grow reluctant to exhibit it once again, in spite of my previous intentions. My concerns about it revealing something too personal for the eyes of the general public seemed to be well-founded, or at least so Dorian implied. But, after asking him and then finally being granted his permission, I could hardly refuse to exhibit it after all.

And so, there we were, at the gallery. Harry had, as he invariably did in social situations, taken the lead and was processing us about the people and paintings to engage in meaningless conversation with the upper echelons of London society, all so that he could make satyric remarks about them into my ear as we walked away. He is perfectly at home playing the role of a society gentleman, and takes a perverse delight in picking apart the minutiae of their characters.

I digress.

We were drinking champagne at the time and, for once, Harry was not smoking. Admittedly, it would have been difficult for him to do so with one arm in mine and the other occupied with holding a glass, but it felt like some pleasant acknowledgement of the enclosed nature of the gallery and the sensitivity of paints to damage from smoke. Most likely, he was unwilling to relinquish the glass because the champagne was particularly good, and unwilling to relinquish my arm out of expectation that I would try to flee before we reached the portrait in question.

He would not have been entirely unjust in the notion. I dreaded seeing the portrait again. After it made Dorian so unhappy when I had finally finished it, and then the strange change I’ve seen come over him since. But, more so, I did not want to see others looking upon it. In case they saw what I knew to be in it, despite all Harry’s claims of foolishness.

But, we did come upon the portrait eventually. It was in the third room in the gallery.

I froze when I saw it. There was something indescribable about the expression, some wicked curve of the lips that was imperceptible from looking at the mouth alone, but painfully apparent when in the context of the other features.

I studied the rest of the portrait. The slight yellowing of the glaze I had so carefully applied over his nails and eyes, imperfections in the smooth brushstrokes recounting his ivory skin, fading of the copper and gold hues of his hair. Damages, perhaps that might have arisen over decades if the painting was poorly taken care of, but so soon and in such a manner...I looked back to the face. Cold, calculating, mocking eyes stared back at me from the canvas.

I shuddered involuntarily, the movement arresting Harry mid-ramble. He followed my gaze, and though I was still fixated on the painting, I swear I could hear him elevate his eyebrows.

“It’s not right.”

The words escaped me, although I’m not quite sure I had intended to say anything.

Harry seemed, for a moment, to be contemplating a drole response, but thankfully remained silent, instead taking my elbow and leading me over to a large window and out onto a balcony.

“I take it those changes were not your doing,” he surmised, lighting a cigarette and exhaling coils of smoke into the cool night air.

I confirmed his suggestion and took the cigarette from his fingers, “Nor is it any natural damage. It’s too precise, and should not occur in any case. I know how to paint, Harry, and that sort of deterioration should not happen. Not so rapidly, nor to so great an extent.”

I brought the cigarette to my lips, relishing the calm engendered by this familiar action and the familiar taste of Harry’s particular choice of cigarette. He allowed me a few more inhalations before taking it back and leaning on the balcony rail, looking back into the gallery at the people strolling past the window.

“You believe he had someone alter it?”

“He must have,” I could see no other possibility, “But why? I thought he was pleased with it. Or, he was. Before he...”

“Before he what, Basil?”

“Before he saw in it what I was afraid of.”

“Your idolatry?”   
The phrase made me flush, “Yes. He suggested he had seen it. I thought, as he was allowing me to exhibit it, perhaps he had thought it acceptable or...I don’t quite know what I thought. But this, this is some sort of revenge?”

“Revenge?” Harry mused over the word, a smirk toying at the corner of his lips, “It is not unlike Dorian, I suppose.”

“Who would want a portrait painted by me after seeing that?”

Harry sighed and leant back against the balcony, “You give the people here too much credit. Most hardly know bad art from good art, several cannot see without spectacles that they refuse to wear, and yet more are here only to put on the impression of being cultivated.”

“How reassuring,” I replied dryly, “To know that none of the people supposedly here to admire the work of us poor artists actually care in the slightest about our art. But even still, what Dorian did...how could he?! I put all my soul into that portrait. Every effort. You said it yourself, it was my best work! And he’s…don’t smile Harry!”

Harry smiled on.

“How nice that you find my predicament amusing!”

“My dear Basil! It is not your predicament that amuses me, but rather I am pleased to find that you still rank your art above all else.”

“I do not!”

“Of course you do!” he argued, “You’ll openly worship that lad from dusk until dawn, up until the moment when doing so comes into direct opposition with your art. And then, he is the devil himself, and you’d renounce his virtues in favour of your art.”

“I never said Dorian was the devil,” I argued, dismayed at the painful accuracy of his accusation, “Nor anything of the sort! Merely that I…”

Harry watched me with that smile still lingering on his lips.

“That I thought better of him. That I-I knew he could be cruel, but that this was more than I imagined.”

“It is less than I had,” Harry said quietly, then added when I gave him a questioning glance, “Dorian is capable of far worse than this, Basil. Of that I am quite certain.”

Any protest I may have put forward died as Harry turned back towards the door, flicking his cigarette away into the street below, signalling the end of our private conversation.

As we walked back inside, Harry paused, “You ought to be pleased, Basil.”

I turned on him indignantly, “Why the devil ought I be pleased, Harry?!”

“There’s nothing of you left in that portrait.”

I laughed. Honestly, laughed. Harry, for all his pretence of indifference, is capable of saying precisely what needs to be said to cheer one up. When the mood of generosity takes him, that is. And for some reason, that mood was upon him far more than usual that evening.

But, this is all but a preamble. I must soon come to the matter itself, and I dread to recall the event. It lasted in all only a few minutes, but how much happened in those few minutes. At least, the part I witnessed lasted only so long. Who can say what events preceded those at the gallery?

We had not been back inside for more than a few minutes when it happened.

Harry’s sister, who must have arrived while we were outside, was...well, let me describe what I witnessed rather than the full event as gathered from gossip after.

Harry and I were talking with a recently remarried woman and her somewhat younger, military-medal-endowed husband. There was shattering of glass, and a shriek that can only be described as enraged. Looking over to the source of the noise, I saw Harry’s sister slash the portrait of Dorian with a broken champagne glass. A single stroke, from the neck to groin of the painted figure, tearing right through the canvas.

She was still stabbing the portrait, tears running down her cheeks and sobs escaping her lips, when Harry reached her. I hadn’t seen him move from my side, but he was the first to reach the scene. Taking her elbow, he moved her forcibly but not harshly out of the room and towards the gallery exit.

I followed, ignoring the looks and whispers that accompanied our hasty departure, stopping only to collect Harry and my coats. I caught up with them outside the gallery. They had already summoned Harry’s carriage, and together, without a word spoken between us, we were away in it.

And that is it. That is all I witnessed of the event. There is nothing more I can add, nor nothing I would wish to conjecture, certainly not before a jury inherently biased against fallen women.

Harry, as we drove towards his sister’s house, was caught between anger and concern, although I doubt any who knew him less well would have read anything on his purposefully expressionless countenance. His sister had calmed down, and sat mute beside me, looking at her hands clasped on her lap. She was still holding the glass, and I gently took it from her.

“Did you cut yourself?” I reluctantly broke the silence, feeling what could only be blood on the sharp object in my hands.

She shook her head, strands of hair falling in her eyes. I glanced at Harry. He met my gaze, but said nothing.

The coach stopped at Harry’s sister’s townhouse, and we both walked her to her door. I waited outside while Harry went in, although I could hear his voice muffled and unintelligible through the door, but still in the hallway. He must have been giving instructions to her maid. I recognised his tone of voice as that used for servants.

He eventually came back out and immediately lit a cigarette.

“Is she alright?” I asked after he’d taken a first indulgent drag.

“You’ll come back with me for a drink.”

Presumptive and rude though Harry’s ‘invitation’ was, I nodded. Whether a result of bearing witness to such a display of unfiltered emotion, or perhaps some subconscious knowledge of Dorian’s fate earlier that same evening, it was evident that neither of us wanted to be alone.

We went together back to Harry’s house, and settled into our usual respective chairs in front of the fire in his private parlour. A room furnished and decorated for a bachelor, as if in overt defiance of his marital status.

“I don’t know what I’ll say to Dorian,” I remember saying at one point, after some irrelevant discourse and few glasses of brandy, “I doubt he’ll sit for me again.”

Harry shrugged at that, and went into some long soliloquy on the subjects of character and possessions or...something...honestly, we might have had more than a few glasses by then.

“Are the rumours true?” I asked while Harry was refilling our glasses, and after his philosophising had for the moment ceased, “About Dorian and your sister?”

Harry only shrugged, “The truth is irrelevant. What matters is the generally held belief, and the consensus is that it is true.”

“I disagree.”

“That is because you are an idealist, Basil,” he replied, “You tell yourself that if something is not true, then it cannot hurt anyone.”

“I do not,” I contradicted with some indignation, “I am perfectly aware that false scandal can cause just as much damage as any terrible reality. But to your sister, surely what people say is not all that matters.”

“You forget, Basil,” he replied, “My sister is a woman.”

I was about to argue that I had not forgotten that, but remained silent. Harry was, to some extent, right on that account. I hadn’t forgotten her female, obviously, but I had forgotten the far greater vulnerability of females to destruction through hearsay than for us men. Indeed, I have so little dealing with women, other than as subjects to paint or patrons to endear myself to, that the matter rarely enters my consideration at all.

“But, surely if neither you nor her husband believe it,” I said, trying to reassure myself as much as him, “Given your rank and positions, the general agreement would be in her favour.”

Harry’s only answer was to refill our glasses, light another cigarette, and move onto a discussion of an opera we’d attended a week earlier.

I didn’t return to my studio until the morning, and remained there for the rest of the day. I had much work to occupy me, hoping to finish a landscape before my current subject arrived in the afternoon, and so had no time to look into a newspaper. It was therefore Lady Savile, arriving mid-afternoon to sit for the portrait her husband had commissioned, who ultimately told me of Dorian’s murder.

At this point, I have gone far beyond what I witnessed, and nothing that follows could possibly be of the least relevance in the trial. I shan’t dwell on what happened next. I don’t wish to recall it.

In short, then. It had not even been one full day, and already there were some unbelievable, truly horrid, rumours circulating about what had happened to Dorian. It was all I could do to hold my brush steady as Lady Savile offered up one after another, delighting in the scandal as if it were nothing more than someone having worn last-season’s fashion in public.

Tales of murder, revenge, suicide, opium intoxication, criminal organisations, and wives set to the task by their wronged husbands.

It was almost unbearable, and yet at that time it still seemed almost possible that perhaps none of it was true. Maybe she had misheard, or misremembered, or it was some other Dorian Gray.

But then there was Harry.

Parker led him into my studio, and he ensconced himself on his usual duvan, lit a cigarette, and said the fateful words.

“You’ve heard about poor Dorian?”

“Oh, yes!” replied Lady Savile, moving her head so I lost the shadow I’d been filling entirely, “All of society has! What do you imagine happened, Lord Wotton? Surely you must have heard something.”

“I’ve heard a great deal,” he replied with that velvet voice that never gave away the least honest emotion.

“And?” she prompted.

He stretched his legs out and looked at her with indifference, “Oh, I didn’t listen to a word. One should always make up one’s own opinions about these matters. Listening to others leaves no room for indulging one’s imagination.”

Lady Savile giggled, flushing and once again ruining the colours I was intending to lay upon the canvas.

Needless to say, I didn’t manage much more of her portrait that afternoon.

When at last the lady left us alone, I called for coffee, and Harry gave me what information he had acquired surrounding the incident. The papers related the story in much less colour than Lady Savile. A simple statement that Dorian Gray had been found dead in his house on Grosvenor Square, and the matter was being investigated by Scotland Yard.

Scotland Yard. I’ve never thought much of that institution, and I think less of them now. Within a few days, the incident at the gallery had come to the attention of their people, and soon thereafter Harry’s sister became their principal suspect. And why not? A jilted woman, disgraced by Dorian, and publically demonstrating her rage towards him.

Harry received the message of her unsurprising arrest from her husband while he and I were together at the club.

Harry read the note with forced indifference, and passed it to me. Barely more than a line of text. The fact and nothing more.

“My sister has been arrested,” he said as if I had not just read that very fact.

“But she was at the gallery that night,” I protested, “Dozens of people saw her.”

Harry only shrugged on shoulder, “You said there was blood on the glass.”

I hadn’t even realised he’d heard me, let alone taken in what I said.

“But she got that glass from the reception. We heard it smash.”

“There was blood on her hands and dress too,” he continued, “She may have killed him before arriving.”

“I don’t believe her to be capable of it.”

He laughed, reclining and looking at me with amusement, “A man could be stabbing you in the neck, Basil, and you’d still not think them capable of murder.”

I glared but made no reply, allowing silence to briefly descend.

Harry sighed, lit a cigarette, and watched the smoke drift upwards, “The truth is that anyone is capable of murder, given the right incentive.”

“She’s your sister, Harry!”

“And that distinction renders her untouched by the vices of this world,” he laughed again, “What an idealist you are, my dear fellow. Despite everything, you still look to see purity in us all.”

I frowned, but knew the argument futile, “Do you believe she did this?”

“She may have. You know Dorian’s cruelty as well as any.”

Silence fell again. So far as silence can ever truly fall in a club filled with men so wrapped up in their own pantomime lives that the death of one who once sat among them is nothing more than a fleeting entertainment or an opportunity to exercise their superior morality.

I leant across to slip Harry’s cigarette case from his pocket and picked one out. He lit it for me and we sat still amidst the meaningless noise.

“I’m sorry, Harry,” I said eventually. He smiled, almost. He knew what I meant.

Sorry for painting that portrait. Sorry for flattering Dorian beyond all reason. Sorry for my part in all this horror.

Harry looked at me after a while, his expression portraying the very same emotion as I felt.

I knew - I know - he blames himself for this just as much as I do. We share equally in the guilt, between us destroying Dorian and through him unknown myriad others.

It should be Harry and I on trial today, not his sister. Not a poor woman who can hope for no better outcome than confinement to an asylum.  _ We _ condemned Dorian to his fate, and we both know it.

But no one else does, and no one else ever will.


End file.
